No Cover: EPMD

Monday, August 30, 2010

No Cover is a streaming audio series that presents New York concert recordings in their entirety. Listen to full-length shows from our partner venues Barbès and Zebulon, as well as other great spaces around the city.

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Long Island hip-hop legend EPMD rocked Queensbridge Park recently as part of the City Parks Foundation summer concert series.

Before You Press Play:

Note that this No Cover concert contains explicit language.

Hometown: Brentwood, Long Island, NY

The Facts: Rappers Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith have been spitting fire as EPMD (Erick and Parrish Making Dollar) since the late-1980s, and creating stone cold hip-hop classics along the way. Case and point? Their first single, 1987’s “It’s My Thing,” which led musician/A&R man Kurtis Mantronik to sign the duo to Fresh/Sleeping Bag Records.

The group's seminal debut, Strictly Business (with hits like “You Gots To Chill,” “I’m Housin,’ and the album's title track) helped cement EPMD’s rightful place in the hip-hop firmament as did the group's subsequent three albums, Unfinished Business (1989), Business as Usual, (1990), and Business Never Personal (1992). After splitting up in 1993, and then producing several solo albums and collaborations, EPMD reunited to release Back in Business (1998), Out of Business (1999) and We Mean Business (2008).

He Said, She Said: “Out of nowhere to the top of the charts, these frosty freezers are one more proof of the supposedly subliterate-to-subcriminal rap audience's exacting prerogatives--what's snapped up as freshest often is. The beats are disco hooks sampled full effect, two or three to the track; the attack is traditionalist, formalist, minimalist. Rapping almost exclusively about rap, E Double EE and Pee MD don't emote or pander or yuk it up. In their one sex boast, the skeezer gets the last word. A- “ —Robert Christgau, Village Voice Consumer Guide, 2008

“When EPMD split, they broke my heart. Not the most revolutionary group in hip-hop, but one of the most consistent in their day.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 2/2009

Comments [2]

I was hoping to contact Eric and Parrish about a project I am working on in Brentwood, where I grew up and went to school.The project is a charter school. I can provide more details later. My cell number is 336-207-0619.I look forward to hearing from you.